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Category: Environment & Green Gardening

Tips for ecologically friendly gardeners and gardens that green and protect the environment.

Plants Around a Birdbath

Plants Around a Birdbath

Attracting wild life and birds in particular is achieved by providing food, water and safety. Your bird-bath has provided the central issue, water, and your plants can help in the other two areas. There is no need to sacrifice colour or the ability to grow flowers for cutting if you choose wisely.

Aiming for a Cool Effect
Vebascum bombyciferum the Mullein has yellow floral spires on grey green foliage and lots of seeds later in the year.
Lamb’s Ears or Stachys byzantiana have mauve flowers with hairy grey leaves.
Yarrow is easy to grow and Achillea Moonshine is the lacy leaved variety I would go for to add to the grey leaved scheme.
Grass is popular with birds and Fountain Grass ‘Pennisetium alopecuroides’ produces late summer floral spikes and winter seeds.
White flowering Rosa Nevada has pale green foliage and the Foxtail Lily Eremurus stenophyllus has white racemes.

Other Plants and Tips
Birds will be attracted by insects who visit flowers like Thyme, Sedum, Sweet Rocket (also called Hesperis matronalis) and Heather.
Background plants can overwinter insects in Virginia creeper and Ivy and also provide nesting sites.
A mixed hedges provide a place of sanctuary.
See also Gardening for Birds on Gardeners Tips or Trees and Shrubs for Birds.
Purchase a good mix of plants of varying heights including some low lying creepers for the edges.
For plants in the shade read


Getting birds in your garden

Photo Credit normanack flickr creative commons.

Colour Temperature in the Garden

Colour Temperature in the Garden

The quality of light can have a strange impact on the way flowers and plants look in both the garden and photographs. Light levels may change with the seasons, weather or surroundings and a cloudy sky will produce a different effect to a clear blue, early morning sky. The greatest single effect is caused by colour temperature as the photographs reveal.

Colour Temperature
Light’s colour depends on the temperature, if you heat an iron bar, it will eventually start to glow dark red . Continue to heat it and it turns yellow and eventually blue-white. We say that red is a “warmer” colour than blue! Colour temperature is measured only on the relative intensity of blue to red. Early morning light has more blue whilst early evening has more red. (see below for a small graphic, measuring temperature of light in degrees kelvin, from Ephotozine)

Tips
Oranges and red-yellow flowers look even better in early evening. Blue purple and some green looks best in the morning.
Quality of colour is in the eye of the beholder so experiment.

Light temperature

Fallen Leaves Good for the Environment

Fallen Leaves Good for the Environment

The fallen leaves of Autumn are a sign of the the hope and regeneration of future seasons. You can pick up inspiration from the sight of golden brown and russet coloured leaves. Who has not been enraptured, at some stage in their life, by the scent of damp leaves or the rustle of crisp, dry leaves kicked up as you pass through a leaf strewn glade.

Uses of Leaves

  • Broad-leafed trees shed their leaves annually to create a carpet of slowly rotting organic matter in woodlands.
  • The carpet of leaves acts as a mulch and encourages worm activity that takes air and water down to the tree roots.
  • Leaves are habitats of a variety of creatures and provide nesting and hibernation resources.
  • Gardeners can collect leaves separately from the compost heap and they will rot down to form a good quality leaf mold. It is a cold and thus slower process than composting.
  • Shredded leaves can be added to the compost heap, in small quantities,  as part of the ‘brown constituent’ of the pile.

You can collect fallen leaves with a multi tine rake
Book Cover

For a labour saving job you can buy a garden vacuum from Amazon.
Book Cover
Read more Easy tips on Composting leaves

Autumn Environmental Tips

Autumn Environmental Tips

Autumn Crocus
Autumn Crocus

Feeding birds and providing habitats continues through autumn and winter. Planning to reuse, re-purpose or recycle also contributes to the Environment. Why take your car to the garden centre to buy more plants in containers when you can derive pleasure from growing your own.

Clear up and Clean up

  • Tidy borders, lightly hoe or fork over to deter weeds and collect up canes, pots & nets.
  • Clear away old crops, leaves and plant debris adding it to your compost heap.
  • Keep one natural corner area  and leave debris to rot down.  Add  a pile of twigs or logs to provide food for insects and shelter for small creatures through winter.
  • Wash all pots and soiled items ready for reuse next year. Save and recycle what you can.
  • Rake up tree leaves as they fall, wet them and put  in to a wire cage or plastic bag with some puncture holes and they will rot down to leaf mould in 18 months or so. (they do not rot quickly or heat up like compost but make small amounts of good friable soil).

Plant Care

  • Plant your spring bulbs, Daffodills go in early to develop good roots but Tulips should wait until November.
  • Save buying new plants by lifting and dividing clumps of herbaceous perennials.
  • Collect your own seeds and plant those to avoid buying new next season.
  • Give your surplus plants to others so they do not need to buy new.
  • Conserve key plants by covering tender specimens such as tree ferns in hessian or move plants into a safe zone.
  • Spread your rotted compost to protect the crowns of plants through winter and give them a good start for next year.

Tools

  • Look after your tools. Clean and oil them.
  • Use a whet stone to sharpen bladed tools and store them safely through winter.
  • Broken handles can be replaced or new long handled tools made by putting a trowel on a broom handle.
  • Think about Christmas presents for you and the garden

Other Resources

Royal Horticultural Society RHS ‘Gardening for All’
National Council for Conservation of Plants and Gardens ‘Conservation through Cultivation.’
Garden Organic National Charity for Organic Gardening.
BBC Gardening

Companion Planting

Companion Planting

greenhouse-companion

‘Good Companions’ by J B Priestley is not a gardening book but it might well have been as it is a tightly observed text on relationships and how one supports the other. Three main reasons for companion planting are mutual feeding, aesthetic considerations and technical or horticultural reasons. Many people will grow Marigolds or Tagetes in close proximity to Tomato plants to distract white fly.

Good Companions

  • Good companions also act as living mulches suppressing weeds and  keeping the roots nice and cool.
  • Form and texture combinations can work well such as spiky Phormiums with the glaucus leaves of Sedum.
  • I like to vary the height with companion planting using annuals like Alyssum or ground cover under taller shrubs and trees.
  • Colour combinations are a whole subject too themselves. Complementary colours or contrasting colours it is your choice but a bit of thought and some serendipity will help.

Companions for Roses.

  • Garlic bulbs are said to ward off aphids and other members of the onion family such as chives, ornamental alliums are rumored to increase the perfume of roses and prevent black spot.
  • The purple and blue-gray  Nepeta Catmint or the lime green Alchemilla works well with any pale pink roses and the wispy spires gracefully camouflage any blemishes that may occur on the rose’s foliage.
  • Herbs and other aromatic plants make wonderful rose companions.  Lavender, scented Geraniums, Feverfew, Parsley and Thyme may suit.
  • Tomatoes allegedly prevent black spot but not many people will be inclined to combine roses and tomatoes.

Bad Companions

  • Not all combinations work;  Beans and Onions do not coexist very well.
  • Strawberries and Tomato will not do as well with brassicassuch as  Cabbage.
  • Cucumbers are tempremental when planted near Potatoes or strong herbs.
  • Watch out in your garden and see what ornamental plants make Bad Companions and let us know what you discover.

Other Resources

Royal Horticultural Society RHS ‘Gardening for All’
National Council for Conservation of Plants and Gardens ‘Conservation through Cultivation.’
Garden Organic National Charity for Organic Gardening.
BBC Gardening

Garden with a Bird Bath

Garden with a Bird Bath

bird-bathsource

A bird bath can be popular with our feathered friends and be a focal point in the garden. If creating a new bed, for plantings, that will have a bird bath as a centre piece locate the bath just off centre. Work into the soil suitable compost  about 4 inches of garden compost will give the bed a good start.

Plant suggestions

  • Use plants of varied heights and colours and bear in mind you are trying to attract native bird species.
  • For the back of the bed try a Persian lilac growing upto 10 feet. Syringia Persica has fragrant mauve flowers.
  • If there is a wall or sturdy fence try Virginia creeper Parthenocissus tricuspidata with it’s red autumn leaves and hiding place for the birds.
  • Read More Read More

Frogspawn Tips and Hints

Frogspawn Tips and Hints


From me’nthedogs on flickr

Spawn
Frogs can be very useful in the garden eating more than their share of slugs. On a warm day from February onward frogs and toads will emerge from hibernation, mate and lay eggs as spawn. Do not worry about too much spawns as one frog will lay up to 2000 eggs of which only half a dozen become adult frogs. If you get far too much spawn so that it is chocking the top of the pond you can transfer some to a bowl so you can watch the tadpoles develop over the next 6 weeks or so. Transferring spawn to another pond may transfer disease or unwanted plants. Toadspawn is formed in long strings rather than the clumped or bunched frogspawn. Newts put there spawn on the underside of leaves.

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Gardening For Climate Change

Gardening For Climate Change

After this wet summer what has happened to Global Warming? Are there any advantages of Global Warming and how should gardeners design for such changes.

What is Global Warming

‘Climate change’ is used as a catch-all phrase to encompass the effects of global warming, the increase in temperature caused by greenhouse gases and the Northerly drift of hotter climates.

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Garden Compost and Bokashi

Garden Compost and Bokashi

Bokashi, Japanese composting, is really a fermenting system. It converts your household food waste into a liquid and food remnants that are ripe for final composting. Ripe isn’t a fair word as it smells only of sweet pickle.

An additive of a lactic acid based micro organisms in a bran carrier is mixed with the food waste in an airtight bin and a culture like a ginger beer plant is created. These microbes include lactobacillus bacteria, phototrophic bacteria and yeast. The fermenting process takes a couple of weeks then the residue can be added to a compost heap or buried even though it can still retain some food colour and shape for a further 4-6 weeks. The liquid can be diluted  with water 1:100 as a fertiliser.

 

Gardeners Tips

  • Adding bran inoculated with organisms can be an extra expense and it seems hard to find a supplier
  • Adding soil and worms to a normal compost heap achieves similar results.
  • The ability to ‘compost’ meat and other food waste is the main plus
  • The two stage process is a bit of a minus
  • A two bin system makes it easier to switch from food collection to maturation
  • Whilst this may be a bid of a fad it encourages a ‘good green routine‘ and is worth a try.
The Empty Vegetable Plot

The Empty Vegetable Plot

Garden Lime

Autumn is a good time to plant a green manure crop in your empty vegetable plot. Green manures are sown deliberately to be dug back into the soil before they flower. This helps improve fertility, suppress weeds, stop leaching and soil errosion and helps condition the soil.

Empty Plot Tips

  • Clear up debris and weeds and make the plot tidy.
  • Test soil and add lime to prevent it becoming too acid and reducing future crops.
  • Leave pea and bean roots to rot down.
  • If soil is heavy dig and leave large clumps for the frost to break down
  • Replan paths and cropp rotation for next year. Do not walk on wet ground.
  • Incorporate rotted compost.
  • Mulch the asparagus bed.

Green Manuring Tips